Rock Band dev releases $2 iOS musical meme generator, VidRhythm

The makers of Rock Band and Dance Central have created a new musical iOS toy …

The latest release from Harmonix—the developer behind music games like Rock Band and Dance Central—is musical, but it isn't a game. VidRhythm is more of a goofy toy you can play around with on your phone. It lets you create music by replacing the sounds of instruments with sounds of your own creation, and the results can be quite strange. As with most of these kinds of things, it's absolutely hilarious the first few times, but the novelty quickly wears off.

VidRhythm comes packed with a library of songs that range from dance to classical, and once you select a track it's broken down into individual sounds. Everything from specific words that need to be sung to the sound of a snare drum. What you'll need to do is record brief snippets to represent each sound using any means you like. You could use your voice to make the drums sound like a beatbox. Or you could attempt to hum the correct bars for Beethoven's Fifth.

VidRhythm

These individual sounds are then magically turned into a song, which, depending on the sounds you made, may or may not actually sound like the source material. If you happen to be tone-deaf, for instance, Symphony No. 5 can end up sounding terribly demonic.

To make things even more bizarre, in addition to recording sound, you'll be recording video: brief, second-long clips that go along with your musical effects. These are then turned into a music video that plays alongside your music, creating an utterly surreal clip that you can then upload to YouTube.

VidRhythm is fun to play around with, and it's definitely the kind of thing that's more enjoyable when you have someone to goof off with. And there's something strangely satisfying about seeing and hearing yourself in a strange, meme-worthy video. But there's a novelty factor here that wears off pretty quickly. Once you've played around with the different songs and experimented with substituting expletives for sounds, there's not a whole lot left to do.

It's the kind of thing you might whip out every now and again to show a friend for a laugh, but little beyond that. Still, you'll certainly get your $2 worth out of the purchase.